by Shane Dayton

Created on: August 01, 2008

"Life of Pi" is a popular fantasy novel by now famous author Yann Martel. "Life of Pi" made a huge splash as it broke onto the scene, garnering praises from many, including Patrick Stewart, famed actor, who referred to it as one of the best books he had read in years. The protagonist, Piscine "Pi" Patel is an Indian boy who goes by "Pi" because his name is often made fun of. Pi begins the novel as a young Indian boy, and through his life this novel goes on to explore many important issues, including religion and spirituality.

This novel is split into three parts. The first section focuses on Pi as an adult who is remembering his childhood in Pondicherry. Pi was the son of a zookeeper, and he seems to speak often about religion and animal behavior. Not bond to any one faith, Pi studies Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam, eventually finding merits in all three, and lamenting in the book, often saying "I just want to love God."

As politics shift in India, Pi's family decides to move to Canada, but on the passage over the ship sinks. This marks the end of the first section.

The second section is told as an allegory in a somewhat medieval style of telling. Through this telling of the story the readers find out that Pi finds refuge on a lifeboat, but he's not alone. Amazingly he is stuck sharing the limited space with an orangutan named Orange Juice, a wounded zebra, a spotted hyena, and a Royal Bengal Tiger named "Richard Parker."

What follows is an incredible, bizarre, and intriguing situation in which he at first believes that Richard Parker (the tiger) abandons the boat, but is actually under a tarp. Meanwhile the hyena eats the wounded zebra, then moves to the other animals. Pi begins to lose his mind, and then he believes the tiger eats the hyena, but now he's stuck on a life boat with a tiger. Pi works on taming the tiger and marking his own territory while trying to make a life raft.

What follows is a brilliant series of events that not only make an incredible story, but causes the reader to wonder and question at what is truly happening and what is not, what is fact and what is in the mind of the teller. They find a mysterious island that is definitely from the fantasy world, in a very Jonathan Swift/Gulliver's Travels sort of way.

A third section delves right into meta fiction, as Pi is questioned after washing up on a beach, he gives this story but nobody believes him. He then gives a much darker and more "realistic," but more disturbing and just as incredible story that could be a possible alternative describing what really happened.

This leaves the readers with two stories, both fantastic, both strange, both disturbing, and the recurring questions that result make the story of Pi an incredible experience that stays with you long after the last page is turned.

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